The Imaging Channel

The Value of Brand Equity in Your Consumables Business

This guest blog was contributed by Luke Goldberg

In the 20 years that I have been in the aftermarket imaging supplies business, I find it remarkable that so few manufacturers and distributors on a national or international level took on a branding strategy. Ironically, it is the smaller, presumably less technically capable regional players who typically put their reputations on the line when they put their brand name on their boxes.

There are a number of factors that have precipitated this lack of true branding in the imaging aftermarket, most of which stem from a fundamental lack of confidence in the quality of the product. In the early days of the toner/ink remanufacturing business, poor quality was combined with horribly ugly packaging that screamed inferiority loud and clear to prospective users. It was the proverbial white box with a toner handprint or ink fingerprint bearing no name to signal the maker of the product. Over time, the packaging improved and the quality along with it (at least to some extent), but still, there were no real brands to speak of.

There is no question that the preponderance of pseudo-brands we see in the market from manufacturers and distributors alike is a result of still lingering doubts regarding quality. If you mess up with a pseudo-brand, you might have another shot with a different product. If you are a manufacturer, your name is on the box, and the product fails, that user will never take a chance on that item again. This creates for the intrepid few manufacturers who have boldly branded their products – a self-correcting mechanism that requires quality and consistency for success.

If you support a brand from a quality company, you then know what you are getting each and every time versus the pseudo-brands, where you can encounter the “cartridge of the day” scenario. It is inherently impossible to engender consistency with your consumables when you never really understand what is in the box, who made it, and where it comes from.

In addition, in today’s business climate, which is wrought with IP challenges from OEMs, it is incumbent on you to know if the product in those boxes is respecting OEM IP. Again, if you don’t know who is making it, you might be unwittingly supporting products that are not protected by our industry’s legal right to repair.

Lastly, if you do opt to support a brand, the maker of that brand owes it to you as a partner to help support it with marketing support, videos, co-op dollars, etc. It really isn’t arguable that brands carry more value and connote a better user experience than generic products. If this wasn’t true, then the biggest companies in the world would be out of business.

Hitch your wagon to a company who believes strongly enough in the product it makes or sells to put its name on it. It is hard to believe that any business selling toner either within an MPS program (where roughly 75 to 80 percent of the CPP originates from consumables) or transactionally (where everything is based on repeat business) would invest so little time into understanding whom and where its products are made. You owe it to yourselves and your customers to do more homework because not all toners are the same, and quality isn’t an assumed benefit. A brand isn’t a guarantee of quality, but at least it creates a mutually synergistic relationship in which you win or lose together.

Contact Luke at lukeg@mse.com.

Posted by Luke Goldberg on 09/12/2011